


Master Hua's One-foot Punch to the Chest

by redleather



Category: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Elizabeth-centric, F/M, That moment on Hingham Bridge, when you love someone in spite of yourself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redleather/pseuds/redleather
Summary: Miss Elizabeth Bennet, nearly one and twenty years of age, had suffered through many indignities, both physical and social, in her short time thus far on God’s green — if somewhat forsaken — earth.





	Master Hua's One-foot Punch to the Chest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Damkianna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/gifts).



_An incredibly loud series of booms, like a hundred cannons fired at once…_

Miss Elizabeth Bennet, nearly one and twenty years of age, had suffered through many indignities, both physical and social, in her short time thus far on God’s green — if somewhat forsaken — earth. Shame and pain, in equal measure. With a mother like hers, she had grown somewhat accustomed to the social ones, but for all the practice she had at enduring them, she had yet to master the patience required to keep her in a state of tranquility about it all.

After her mother’s port-drenched exultations about Jane, and her other daughters’ prospects at the Netherfield ball, she’d had little time to dwell on the hot flush of embarrassment she’d felt and her own subsequent, less-than-ladylike reactions, after all, there had been unmentionables in the kitchen to see to and Mr Darcy was, as per usual, being infuriating. But alone, later, with Jane already asleep peacefully in their bed, dreaming blissfully of Mr Bingley no doubt, Elizabeth once again felt that hot flush. Who had overheard? Half the neighbourhood she should think.

She shuddered to think of what Master Wei in Henan would have to say on this lapse in her calm. He would chastise her regularly for her temper, when her frustrations got the better of her, when she once again landed on her backside, when the pain and the tiredness got to her.

“Don’t think about the pain, just react,” he would tell her in Mandarin. “There is no time for indulging pain, for deep breaths and meditating to find your centre. The zombies are upon you, what will you do? React!”

_Bright light, like the flash of her pistols, like the lightning in Carpathia and the Steppes as she travelled to China with Jane…_

But yes, physical indignities were oddly much easier to endure, particularly pain. There were the thousand little discomforts that months on the road without the availability of a proper toilette dealt you, but these were nothing compared to punching a training pole in the freezing rain until your knuckles split and each bone felt broken. You could apportion so much blame to physical pain, that you should probably lay elsewhere. It was why, when Mr Darcy left her in the Collins’ parlour after his disastrous proposal, she was able to cry so vigorously about all the things that physically hurt, rather than the hot burning shame of it all. No, it wasn’t that he rightfully pointed out that, bar Jane, her entire family could be frightfully inappropriate. No, it wasn’t that he wounded her pride when he'd called her tolerable at the dance in Meryton, or insulted her in turn as he professed to love her.

It was that he had bested her in combat, left her back and blue, without even trying it seemed, without even fighting back, though she had given him her best! And now, she was bruised and sore and in a state of partial disrobement. There was a tantalizing heat in his eyes when he'd seen how the poker in his hand had popped the fastenings of her dress, and before when he'd held her down over the table, when combat had invigorated him and he still thought he might win her.

She had really cried for the bitter disappointment of knowing he'd been the means of shattering Jane's happiness, his hypocrisy. Not for how he was the only man who could best her combat, the only man worthy of her. She had wanted him to feel the pain she felt having confirmed her suspicions about Jane... and yet had she really tried to hurt him? She could have plunged that knife into his chest, and in that moment he would have let her he seemed so shocked by her words, but she'd held back, merely held it to his flesh.

_A wall of hot air, like large hand, pushing her, the horse rearing to throw them, the feeling of Mr Darcy’s warmth leaving her back and the ground falling away…_

Physical indignities, so much easier to endure, like how her head hurt tremendously, threatening the sudden expulsion of what little she’d eaten since her mad dash to Hingham with Jane. She held it in though, and realised nothing else had been involuntarily expelled, though that seemed to be the height of her luck. Every part of her person ached, her ears rang with a terrible sound. _Don’t think about the pain, just react. There is no time for indulging pain, for deep breaths and meditating to find your centre. The zombies are upon you, what will you do? React!_

She lifted her head; she was prostrate on her back on the cold, hard ground, and took a moment that lasted an eternity to situate herself. The bridge, the explosion due at sunrise, Wickham and the horde of unmentionables behind them. Darcy. Where was Mr Darcy?

She turned her head and cast her eyes about briefly. Smoke burnt acridly in her already raw lungs and obscured her vision. The ringing persisted like a roar in her ears, although already she was beginning to hear raised voices penetrate. There was Mr Darcy, and she could see and hear from where she lay that silence and stillness sat about him like a shroud. He was terribly still.

She crawled to him on hands and knees that were bruised and tender as a thousand horrors as to his condition swarmed her head. There was one foremost in her mind; don’t be dead whatever else may have befallen you.  Don’t be dead, because you rode to save my sister even though you thought I despised you. Don’t be dead, because you tried to warn me about Wickham and how much of a blackguard he was. Don’t be dead, because I love you and I can’t tell you that every day for the rest of my life and yours if you’re dead.

She pulled him over onto his back, his face smeared with dirt and soot. She tried to listen for the sounds of his breath, tried to feel for signs of life, but he was pale and still and blood poured sluggishly from a wound on his head. He seemed unusually small and fragile for a man as tall and imposing as he was. Her tears flowed and splashed onto his pale flesh as she sobbed and silently begged God and any other deity that would listen to save him.

“From the very first moment I beheld you, my heart was irrevocably gone,” she spoke into his mouth and kissed his cool lips. The shocking truth of it hit her like one of Master Hua’s famous one-foot punches to the chest. She loved him, she admired him, she respected him and now he was dead in her arms. _I’ve been so selfish, I’ve been so blind and prideful and insensible of my own heart,_ she thought.

 _One more bargain with God,_ she prayed. _Not for me, for him. Save him, not for me, but for him. Whatever else just save him. I don’t have to have him, I don’t deserve him, but let him live and come what may._ She kissed his lips again and the voices grew louder. Then suddenly, blessedly, she felt the barest hit of a warm exhalation against her lips. And then there was another, and another. Not the last gasp of air leaving a dying body, but warm breath, life.

Then there were soldiers and officers upon them, working their way around a pile of rubble that obscured them from the view of the camp. They called for a medic, they brought a stretcher and her own dear Jane was at her side, pulling her to bosom to cry, “Oh Liz! Lizzy! My dearest Lizzy, we thought you hadn’t made it. When I saw the bridge go up I thought I was watching you plunge to your death.”

She let herself be comforted in the warm clutch of her sister's arms for a long moment.

He lived, she thought, and therefor I do too.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Damkianna, Hello! I loved the letter you gave me. It was a wonderful read. And I'm crying now because I did such a terrible job of fulfilling you request. I've never actually written in this fandom, so it was a welcome challenge for me and you gave me soooo many wonderful ideas, I might just go off and write all of them at some point to make up for how poxy this offering is. Anyway, happy Yule to you! xxx


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